Head of an Old Man (0)

Remarkably intact for a Roman head, this superb portrait is of the highest quality. Its closest parallel, in the Uffizi museum, was identified as being a portrait of Cicero, and this bust has a 19th Century base with MTC on it for Marcus Tulius Cicero. We now know the type is not in fact Cicero, as a Roman bust with a Roman inscription identifying the subject as Cicero turned up that looks nothing like this head. The identity of this head is unknown, but he must have been very high up to have had such a beautiful portrait of him carved and particularly to have had more than one commissioned.

The type, because it was identified as being of Cicero, was widely copied in the 18th and early 19th Century, but this does not look like them, it really does seem to be Roman.